No More Drama: Black Theater Takes on Homophobia

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No More Drama: Black Theater Takes on Homophobia
by Laura Whitehorn

October 4, 2006

A dark stage in a small theater on New York City’s Lower East Side brightens slightly to reveal the altar of a deserted church. A young black man staggers from the shadows. Clutching a bottle, he rails drunkenly at the church for excluding him and his lover from a special mass for couples. Enter God—a.k.a. “Miss Sophie”—who reminds him of his cowardice in the face of this homophobia, for which his lover has now left him. “You’re cultivating the seeds of self-destruction your church planted in you,” she intones. “You need to declare your love to the heavens.”

Even God can seem powerless against the mounting toll of HIV in black communities. But Miss Sophie is not alone. A Love Like Damien’s is part of a new theater movement confronting the epidemic, not just in entertainment-overloaded New York but in Washington, DC; Cleveland; Cincinnati; and Seattle. Artists are training their creative powers on homophobia as one particularly stubborn obstacle keeping black people from getting tested for HIV or getting treated once they’re diagnosed.

Anthony Morgan of the New York State Black Gay Network says this moment is unlike any since the days of the late positive black artists Marlon Riggs and Essex Hemphill, part of the group Other Countries in the 1980s and ’90s. The message in this second wave is that black gay and bisexual people need to—and can—win acceptance from the broader black community as a step toward addressing health issues that affect everyone. “AIDS is still rising in our community, and it’s unacceptable,” Morgan says. “So we realized we have to dig into our toolbox for different tools.”

Some of the most powerful performance themes are inspired by the artists’ own travails. Monte Wolfe, for instance, who cofounded the Brave Souls Collective in Washington, DC, was able to turn the real-life drama of his difficulties disclosing his HIV to his mother into a dramatic monologue to be performed in November.

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http://www.poz.com/articles/401_10652.shtml